Table of contents for March 2025 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

I once saw someone’s beating heart. Don’t worry, the story isn’t as grisly as it sounds. It was an ultrasound scan (also known as an echocardiogram): a video in black and white of my gran’s heart. She had a leaky valve, which meant blood didn’t always move around the chambers in one direction, as it should. Instead, each time the muscle relaxed, a flap in the heart wouldn’t close tightly enough and blood would flow backwards. The visual of a beating heart, on that screen, squeezing blood from one chamber into another, was probably one of the best biology lessons I had ever had. The textbook version of a heart, flat and motionless, didn’t really equip me with me with a proper understanding of how it worked. This did. Above…

Hitch a ride DERBYSHIRE, UK Symbiotic relationships show nature in harmony, how two species can mutually benefit each other as part of the complex tapestry of life. They can also be pretty gross, as demonstrated by the partnership between the phoretic mite and the dor beetle. The opportunistic phoretic mites (Poecilochirus carabi) use the beetles as a kind of public transport system. The orange mites hitch a ride on the bigger insects’ backs, wings or abdomens (as seen here) to the dor beetle’s favourite brunch spot: a fresh, steaming pile of dung. While the dor beetle tucks into the mouthwatering manure, the mites feast on fly larvae that’s been laid among the faeces. Beetles naturally compete with flies for the delicious droppings, so the mite’s choice of meal broadly benefits…

“Turtle dance moves include tilting their bodies vertically, waving their front flippers and spinning in place” Ever heard a large crowd being referred to as a ‘sea of people’? Well, the phrase might be more appropriate than you think, according to a team of Spanish scientists led by Prof Denis Bartolo. By observing people at the opening ceremony of the San Fermín festival in Pamplona, Spain – best known for the Running of the Bulls – the team found that extremely dense crowds behave like liquids. When sharing the same limited space, people would move in predictable and fluid ‘ripples’. In 2019 and from 2022–2024, the scientists placed two cameras over a plaza in Pamplona measuring 50 × 20m (164 × 66ft), allowing them to monitor an estimated 5,000 festival-goers…

…A SUBTLE CAMERA FOR YOUR GARDEN In a cold, increasing digital world, the Petal aims to bring its users back to nature. Soon to be launched on Kickstarter, the foliage-inspired camera mimics the shape of a flower, in order to attract your local bug population and record it. With a flexible stand, it can be stood up like a sunflower or draped around a tree branch. The app it’ll eventually come with, if it gets the necessary backing, will let you watch wildlife live and save moments to experience again. It’ll even have swappable lenses for different views. Petal £TBC, experiencewonder.com …A COMPLETELY WIRELESS TV We don’t often see real innovation in the TV market, maybe a rollable screen here or a transparent display there. Useful changes are rare, but…

Mouth Organ With new evidence suggesting that poor oral health can affect the whole body, Caroline Steel sinks her teeth into why the fields of dentistry and medicine have traditionally been kept separate. Listen now on BBC Sounds Winterwatch in Wales Welsh ornithologist Iolo Williams, travels from Wales’s rugged coast to its cities, to find out how animals seek refuge in winter. Watch now on BBC iPlayer Health Check: The global oxygen crisis Oxygen shouldn’t be a privilege. A world-first report has revealed the countries at risk of suffering a medical oxygen shortage and the steps we need to take to keep the global supply chain accessible. Listen now on BBC Sounds…

reply@sciencefocus.com BBC Science Focus, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST @sciencefocus www.facebook.com/sciencefocus @bbcsciencefocus LETTER OF THE MONTH A light lunch In the Q&A titled ‘How much weight fluctuation is normal?’ (February, p86), Dr Nish Manek says that eating food adds to your weight for a short time as it travels through your digestive system. I used to work at a health centre, where I used scales to determine a patient’s weight. One day, I weighed myself before lunch while holding my sandwiches and cake (minus the packaging and plates). Immediately after eating, I weighed myself again to see if it would be the same – only to find that I was three whole grams lighter than I had been before eating. Fred Bellamy, Bath WRITE IN! The writer of next issue’s…

The asteroid Bennu has been the talk of the scientific community since samples from its surface were collected, returned and analysed. But while those investigations revealed the asteroid hosts all the building blocks of life, an alarming discovery has been made about its trajectory: Bennu could hit Earth. Based on modelling estimates, scientists believe there’s only a 1-in-2,700 chance of a collision. But, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances, its impact could launch as much as 400 million tonnes of dust, debris and ash into the planet’s atmosphere. This could block out the Sun, cooling Earth by 4°C (7.2°F) and triggering a global winter. Less sunlight would spell disaster for Earth’s plants and, in turn, other forms of life, while disruption to the water cycle would…

Polar bears are “not encroaching on Churchill,” insisted artist Sandra Cook when I visited her home studio. “This is the polar bears’ land.” Given that fewer than 1,000 people live year-round in Churchill, on the edge of the Canadian Arctic, there are approximately as many polar bears as there are humans. The remote community in Manitoba sits on a spot where the river meets the Hudson Bay. It’s here that, for thousands of years, bears have gathered at the start of winter, waiting for the first ice to form. However, as the Arctic continues to rapidly warm, each year the bears have to wait longer on land. Cook has seen bear footprints in her backyard – “right where I walk every morning. That was terrifying.” Her teenage daughter, Kara, has…

Whether it’s to escape environmental collapse or to explore new, unknown territories, the drive to establish human colonies in places other than on Earth has been gaining momentum in recent years. And while proposed bases on the Moon or Mars might get all the headlines, there’s another equally hostile and largely unknown location a lot closer to home that explorers are also looking towards: the bottom of the ocean. This is by no means a new idea. Starting with French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau in the 1960s, people have been building and spending limited amounts of time in underwater habitats for decades. More recently, NASA has been sending people to the Aquarius Reef Base, a research facility on the ocean floor just off the coast of Florida, since 2001. Located 20m…

…A VARIATION ON THE FLYING CAR The Xpeng Aeroht is one of the weirdest car gimmicks we’ve seen. Just a concept for now, it’s a futuristic-looking six-wheel electric minivan (think a beefed-up Cybertruck). The real surprise is in the boot, however, where a personal six-rotor aircraft is kept. In theory, you’d be able to push a button and the aircraft will unfold out of the back, ready for take off. Your futuristic-looking van will even charge up the aircraft as you drive around, so you’re ready for all those moments when you need to take to the skies. Xpeng Aeroht X5 £TBC, aeroht.com …A CREEPY ROBOT FOR YOUR CHILD Who needs a babysitter when you’ve got a creepy robot to look after your child? TCL’s AI-Me (pronounced Amy), is a…

LUKE GILLESPIE, SUNDERLAND DOES YOUR NAME AFFECT YOUR PHYSICAL APPEARANCE? Spare a thought for parents-to-be who are agonising over what to name their little bundles of joy. Because, according to new research, it does indeed seem that your name can affect your face. Eventually. The inspiration for the new research was a finding dubbed the ‘face-name matching effect’. It refers to the phenomenon where people seem to be able to look at a person’s face and then identify their name from a list of options with surprising accuracy – better than if they were simply guessing. This raises a couple of possibilities. Either, parents see their infant’s face and then give them a name that matches it in some way. Or, our names affect our appearance, so that we end…

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Making changes to your everyday life can feel like you’re playing a part in making the future more environmentally sustainable. But new data suggests that storytelling by energy organisations often places an unrealistic burden on consumers to be heroes in the climate change narrative, absolving the industry of its responsibility. Meanwhile, individuals’ actions pale in comparison to the impact of big businesses. “We need to be much more careful about how we talk about this,” says Dr Tom van Laer from the University of Sydney Business School in Australia, who authored the study published in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. Globally, the energy sector is the largest contributor to carbon emissions. So van Laer wanted to check how accurately energy organisations in his country – responsible for almost…

Turtles are known for their extraordinary navigation abilities – they’re capable of travelling across oceans to return to the same nesting and feeding grounds throughout their lives. In fact, their skills are so good that it puts them in the mood to dance. A new study, published in Nature, has revealed that baby loggerhead turtles perform a lively jig when their preferred places to feed are nearby. The discovery suggests that they use magnetic fields as signposts, detecting the unique signatures of a particular feeding ground and celebrating when they find them. The turtles’ dance moves include tilting their bodies vertically, holding their heads above the water, opening their mouths, waving their front flippers and spinning in place. Researchers prepared two water tanks to match the magnetic signatures of two…

There are so many supplements claiming to help you defy the ageing process that it’s easy to think a veritable home pharmacy is needed to keep you healthy into old age. But a new study points to just one supplement that can have a real benefit to your longevity: omega-3. Regular capsules of the fatty acid could slow down your biological ageing. Unlike chronological age (the number of birthdays you’ve had), biological age is a more accurate predictor of lifespan as it reflects the rate of change in your DNA. For the study, published in the journal Nature Ageing, an international team of researchers compared the effects of omega-3 against vitamin D and regular exercise in over 700 adults aged over 70. Over three years, the participants – all living…

I have been working in the field of obesity for nearly 30 years, largely trying to understand bodyweight regulation through genetics. And what I know is that the genetics of bodyweight is, by definition, the genetics of how the brain influences our appetite. Broadly speaking, your brain needs to know two things to influence appetite. First, it needs to know how much fat you’re carrying (as your long-term energy source, it’s directly related to how long you would last without food). Second, it needs to know how much you’re eating and have just eaten (these short-term energy signals are going to come from your gut). These long-term fat and short-term gut signals come in the form of hormones secreted into your bloodstream. When they reach your brain, it senses them…

…The best for a little bit of everything Nothing is a fairly new brand in the tech world, launching back in 2020, but it’s even newer to the earbud market. With its first earbuds arriving in late 2021, Nothing lacks the back catalogue that its competitors in this round-up have. Nevertheless, it’s a real contender, with the right blend of affordability, features and sound quality. There are three options to choose from in Nothing’s range, but it’s the Ear (a) earbuds that offer the best overall balance. These funky offerings look like the younger, cooler sibling of Apple’s AirPods. Despite the lower price point, the Ear (a) buds provide ample noise cancelling. In our test, they even managed to block out a full train of rowdy rugby fans, which is…

In the works of Plato, a Greek philosopher who lived around 2,400 years ago, the island of Atlantis was said to have been drowned in the Atlantic Ocean after the hubris of its people angered the Gods. Although Atlantis was fictional, the idea that entire civilisations can disappear beneath the waves has intrigued us for millennia. Now, innovative technologies are revealing real sites around the world that our ancestors were forced to abandon before they were swallowed by the oceans. One such ‘Atlantis’ lies to the north of Australia. At the height of the last Ice Age, around 21,000 years ago, the continent of Australia was around 20-per-cent larger than it is today. With more water locked up in ice sheets and glaciers, sea levels were around 120m (394ft) lower.…